Nine Darts
Nine Darts is the second chapter of Liar Game: Roots of A, which focuses on the struggles of a diseased boy to get himself and his infected family accepted in society. Plot The story is told through the eyes of Shibara Minoru, a part-timer who has next to no qualifications apart from his ability to play the game of Darts, which he takes great pride in. After finding a job cleaning up at a concentration facility called Green Mountain Starlight Park, he discovers that everyone there is infected by Green Disease, an illness that turns ones' face and hair green, makes them exceptionally weak, and blurs their vision. The employers call them dregs to society, and force them to work as hard or even harder than they are capable. Upon further research, Minoru is shocked to discover that the disease is not only curable, but the rate of infection is extremely low. The head is merely using them for cheap labor in order to manufacture illegal goods to sell for much higher than they are worth. He is caught researching this, and as punishment is sent to what they call the Garden of Punishment. The Garden itself is a very small courtyard with walls too high to climb out of. There is a single apricot tree hanging over the walls, but it is too high to get to without perfect throwing accuracy. A boy infected with Green Disease named Kisaragi Kyo manages to shoot one down with a rock through the window of the courtyard, as thanks to Minoru for helping him avoid punishment. He says that he developed that skill from having been put in the Garden so frequently. Minoru asks Kyo if he has ever played darts, to which he responds negatively. Minoru pulls out a dartboard and some darts and manages to score 100 using three darts, much to his pleasure. Kyo manages to top his score at 180. Minoru challenges the director of the Facility, Saikawa Shigeo, to a darts game called 501. Shigeo wins in 17 moves, which Minoru applauds. He then suggests that if a patient with Green Disease could do that, it would prove the issue of their eyesight to be false, and therefore the rest of their symptoms. He begs for Shigeo to allow Kyo to challenge all 20 of the employees to a game, and if he wins, the facility is to be shut down. Shigeo smugly agrees to this, knowing that he has ways to make Kyo lose no matter what. On the day of the game, Kyo manages to beat the first 19 employees with relative ease. Shigeo had hired a professional dart-player for the 20th, who subsequently threw a 10-darter, which is an almost perfect game. Kyo would have to play a perfect 9-dart game in order to win against him, with which he struggles, but manages to accomplish. Shigeo is impressed, but says that the agreement was to beat all of the employees, and he had yet to play due to the professional dart player making the 20th. He suggested that the final round be a bit different; he placed an apple in Minoru's mouth and told Kyo that he needed to hit the apple, but not Minoru, in order to free his fellow men and women. Kyo was about to give up, not willing to risk impaling his best friend, but Minoru tells him that it's okay; he is confident that Kyo can do it, and become a professional dart player. Kyo succeeds, and the facility is forced to free its slaves. An indefinite time later, Kyo is shown winning the World Championship for darts, and that the Green Mountain Starlight Park's employers were arrested. Minoru is still in between jobs, but when he hears that Kyo thanked him for his championship on international television, he states that he can now call himself human, from the heart. Characters *Shibara Minoru *Kisaragi Kyo *Saikawa Shigeo Canon vs. Non-Canon While Green Disease was never mentioned in the main series, most of the actions in the story are possible in real life, and therefore are also possible in the world of Liar Game. The biggest hint that it is non-canon comes with Saikawa Shigeo, who looks and acts exactly like Saikawa, the Lycaons' manager, from the anime and manga series, One Outs, also written by Shinobu Kaitani. The Lycaons are mentioned in a question by Satou Tetsuzou during the Second Round, so it is likely that One Outs takes place in the same world as Liar Game, and since Saikawa is, by that logic, in the Liar Game world, he cannot be the manager of the Lycaons and also the Green Mountain Facility, since his career would have ended after Nine Darts, and he appears the same age in both. Thus, Nine Darts is not canon. Category:Manga Category:Roots of A Category:Chapters